To hold means to have something in your grasp or to keep it in place. You hold a pencil when you write, hold your breath when you swim underwater, or hold someone's hand when crossing the street. The word held is the past tense: yesterday you held the door open for a friend, or last week you held your little sister's birthday present before wrapping it.

But holding goes beyond just gripping objects. A container holds water. A theater holds two hundred people. When you hold an opinion, you maintain a particular belief or viewpoint. A judge might hold that a law is constitutional. In sports, when a team holds their opponents to just ten points, they've kept them from scoring more.

The word appears in many useful phrases. To hold up can mean to delay something (traffic held us up) or to remain strong (the old bridge held up during the storm). When you hold back, you restrain yourself. To hold on means to wait or to grip tightly. And when something holds true, it remains valid: the advice your grandfather gave you might hold true throughout your entire life.